PC won't Boot

[Shaddax]

I bought a new 320 Hard drive for my M-in-L's PC. I installed it in my own PC to partition it and install software. It ran perfectly. Back in my M-in-L's PC it won't boot. I understand that several drivers will be different etc but nothing which should stop the boot process. I used the same XP disc for both mine and my M-in-L's drive.
The drive is seen in the BIOS. During bootup we get to the "Windows didn't shut down properly last time / menu" screen. Choosing "safe" loads the drivers then hangs, choosing any other option hangs there and then.
I have logged on in dos via the repair option of the XP disc. I have tried FIXBOOT and FIXMBR. Chkdsk reports good drive.
Just using primary master (hard drive) and secondary master (DVD ROM) so no jumper related conflicts.
Any ideas anyone please?

[Jimdefruit]

You have to install the XP system on the PC it is intended for. Unfortunately the XP startup requires the same motherboard and config so you cant just install it on a hard drive and then transfer the hard drive to a new motherboard.

[dandnsmith]

You might just get away with it by starting in safe mode, removing all the bits of hardware in device manager which are different with the 'new' PC, and then letting it go through the 'finding and installing new hardware' process on next boot.

[Shaddax]

Thanks for your replies guys
My understanding is that XP will install the same files regardless of which PC it is installed in. The specialised files/drivers which are usually required are supplied on a separate disc eg Motherboard disc etc, which I have.
I recently installed XP on a Dell PC, this uses exclusive Dell drivers etc which I had to download from Dell, the PC would boot up without them though - only in 4 colours, no sound etc but Windows has enough generic stuff to boot anything.
As for booting into Safe mode - as I said it hangs after loading the drivers.

[Mickha]

As mentioned XP matches itself to the Motherboard, on installation, for security reasons, previous copies like ME and Win 98 didn't so you could just swap hard drives and it would work.
Some Motherboard manufacturers do have drivers, you can load on a floppy disk, to get around this problem, but it would be easier to just install XP again on the new computer.
If the Motherboard in your computer and your mother in laws computer were the same make you might get around this problem.

[Rojo]

Yup. XP won't let you do this. You can try diong a repair using the XP disk, but you'll end up with a flakey environment. Best off just reinstalling on the machine it's going to be used on. Is there any reason that you don't want to do this?

[dandnsmith]

The XP stuff seen at the end of the load has been customised to some extent - apart from the bit which authorises that PC to run it.
In particular the Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) stuff is customised (so you can never find that in the original files.

[Shaddax]

Thanks for your input everyone. Sometimes the thing to do is to listen to the answers that I am receiving!!
I put the drive back in my M-in-Law's PC and did a repair installation via the XP disc - perfect! Thanks once again.

[daithi]

Thanks guys. A very interesting thread to read